I shook my head, and then, thinking he might not be able to see me very well, I spoke up. “I will come down when my father decides not to pass his oldest daughter off like she is the prized cow.”
“You would actually be a heifer, dear Allete, since you are, I hope, still a maiden.”
“I…you…how dare you? Thomas, if you do not hold your tongue, I am going to sew your lips shut.” It was a mean thing to say—I knew it—but I could not keep the words from spilling out. I just wanted to be alone to wallow in my pity and disappointment. Was that too much to ask?
He must have read my mind, because he finally relented.
“Fine, I will leave you be—for now—but if you do not come down from there in the next hour, I will send Clay after you.”
“Don’t you dare.” I growled. Clay was the captain of the guard and the bane of my existence. Most of my life, he’d been assigned to protect me and he took his job very seriously. Not only did he prevail in his duty, but he sucked the fun out of everything until life was simply a shriveled-up husk. Thomas knew if anything would get me out of the tree, it would be the captain.
He began to whistle as he walked toward the castle, and I wanted to throw a rock at him. He knew how much I hated when he whistled— it was his way of signifying that he’d won some battle between us. This time, unfortunately, he had. I knew I would eventually have to come down to face my sentencing. Okay, so it was a marriage, not a sentencing, but it felt as though they were one in the same—like I would be walking to the gallows and the wedding was the noose to be wrapped around my neck. Perhaps I was being a tad dramatic, but better to be dramatic in private and then poised and mature in public. I wouldn’t lose my dignity over this, but I knew it was going to break something inside of me. The part of me that longed to be wild and free, to roam new lands and meet new people, would be snuffed out, and there was nothing I could do about it. I was stuck, a product of my circumstances, with no way to change my lot in life.
Later that evening, after I had finally decided to put on my big-girl bloomers, I sat in the warm water of the bathtub in my chambers. The scents of freesia and bath oils wafted on the steam around me, causing me to relax and my eyelids to droop. I didn’t want to think about what changes would come in a month’s time. I didn’t want to think about my duties or the expectations placed upon me. I just wanted to sit in peaceful silence.
“I can’t believe they’re making you marry that old king.” My youngest sister, Dayna, came storming in to my room.
“Why do the gods hate me so,” I grumbled as I reached for a towel. Usually, I would have Lidia, my handmaiden attend to me, but I’d sent her to bed, not wanting to see the pity in her eyes.
“What are you going on about?” I asked Dayna as I climbed out of the warm tub. Water dripped down my body and the air hit my wet skin, causing me to shiver. My youngest sister, who happened to be the tallest of the four of us and the most inquisitive, snatched up the towel from my hands and began drying me off. For many, the action would have been awkward, but Dayna was the type of person who always needed to be doing something. She couldn’t talk unless her hands or feet were also moving, so I moved obediently as she motioned for me to step out of the tub and then lifted my arms. Her movements were quick and efficient, and all the while she barely took a breath.
“Father is expecting you to marry the king of Tara! I mean, he’s ghastly, old, and he’s already been married three times. I mean…bloody hell,”
“Language,” I said, interrupting. Dayna waved me off, as if my pending nuptials were much more important than a loose tongue.
“Everyone says his wives died of natural causes, but how can we be sure? For all we know, he’s been strangling them in their sleep.”
“That’s a pleasant thought,” I muttered as she wrapped the towel around me and then grabbed another to begin working on my hair.
“Perhaps he’s poisoned them so their deaths appeared to be natural,” Dayna continued, as if I hadn’t said a word. “There’s something not right about it. A man, a king no less, should not have so many wives just die like that.”
“Now you are the expert on the lifespan of queens?” I teased.
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Why are you taking this so easily? Why aren’t you pitching a fit?”
“I didn’t take it easily.” I admitted. “Honestly, I’m a right mess, but there’s nothing I can do to change it, love. Father said I am to marry the king of Tara, so I will be marrying the king of Tara.”
Dayna groaned as she took my hand and tugged me over to the chair that sat in front of the vanity. She motioned for me to sit and then grabbed the hair brush from the counter, her fingers nimble and quick as she worked through the tangles. I’d always loved to have my hair brushed and braided. It was relaxing and could easily lull me to sleep.
After I’d endured her seemingly endless theories on how the first three wives of the king of Tara had died, Dayna let out a breath, finally resigned. “There’s no hope, is there?”
I looked at her through the mirror as she finished tying off the plait into which she’d woven my hair. “I assure you, little sister, if there were anything I could do to get out of such an arrangement, I would do it in a heartbeat. I don’t want to marry someone I do not love, but I am the oldest. Such is my lot in life.”
“Your lot in life is about as pleasant as a mouthful of chicken shite.”
I laughed. “Where do you hear such things? Mother would have fit.”
She grinned back at me. “The cook’s daughters have wicked tongues.”
I longed for the day when I, too, could run about unfettered, playing with the other children who lived in the castle, most of whom belonged to the staff. Dayna was sixteen, still young enough that Mother and Father ignored her flightiness, but at twenty, I was expected to behave in a more mature manner. I showed just how mature I could be when I hoisted myself, dress and all, up into that tree today. I grinned, wondering how my future husband would handle finding me up in a tree after our first little argument.
“What are you grinning about?” Dayna asked.
I turned to look at her. She was sitting cross-legged on my bed, the brush disregarded to the side as she picked at the lace on her night gown.
“I have a feeling Father didn’t give the dear old king of Tara an accurate picture of his future bride’s true personality. If he had, I can assure you he would not have offered such a high-bride token.”
Dayna smiled. “Very true. You might want to learn to sleep with one eye open, Sister. If his other wives did indeed die of natural causes, you might be his first murder victim.”
“Promise to avenge me if I turn up dead,” I said with a wink as I stood and stretched my arms above my head. My muscles were still tight, filled with tension from the day. Perhaps a good night’s sleep would put things into perspective and tomorrow my circumstances wouldn’t seem so awful. Perhaps, but probably not.
“I’m tired, runt,” I told her as I shooed her off the bed.